The present invention relates generally to a golf cart that is self-balancing and collapsible by a single-action button release, and thus is easy to use by golfers and easy to carry or put away for storage because the small and compact size when the golf cart is collapsed.
The sport of golf has gained tremendous popularity in recent years. The sport of golf, however, routinely have players carrying 11-13 clubs (or more, if playing for leisure purpose and not subject to rules promulgated by the US Golf Association) in a bag. The use of a golf cart is thus part of the needed equipment.
For ease of carrying and storage, 2-wheeled collapsible golf cart has been around for many years. The collapsing of the traditional 2-wheeled cart is a single-fold structure, though simple and easy to use, is not self-balancing and requires players' hand power to keep its rolling balance when pulling or pushing it.
To overcome this problem, 3-wheeled golf cart is adopted, where players can leave the golf cart alone in a free-standing mode and need only pull or push it, without worrying about maintaining its balance at time of moving the golf cart. The early 3-wheeled golf cart is structurally the same as the 2-wheeled model with an added front wheel. Other than this front wheel (making it a self-balancing free-standing golf cart), the folding/collapsing mechanism is not changed or improved, as shown in FIG. 1.
Because of increased size of 3-wheeled golf cart, collapsible 3-wheeled golf cart is also invented, to reduce the size at time of transporting and storage. An example is the collapsible golf cart in U.S. Pat. No. 7,137,644, issued to Kevin Kimberley (“Kimberley 644 patent”).
However, the reduced-sized 3-wheeled golf cart requires two or three separate actions to collapse and fold down the cart. The folding mechanism, including front wheel's turning an angle (as disclosed in Kimberly 644 patent) requires separate steps and sometimes cause some problems if consumers somehow mix up the operations of the several steps needed.
Present invention provides for a 3-wheel collapsible golf cart that has a collapsing mechanism different from the prior arts and provide for a “single action” collapsing, so that the folding and expanding is always intuitive and straight-forward and consumers need not worry about the sequence of the operational steps to collapse/expand the golf cart.